ong suffusion of
sentiment all ready to my hand; and really, I feel half inclined to
write my novel after all. But let me state the facts--for which I am
prepared to vouch--and then it will be time enough to see if we can
weave them into a great and classical romance.

Away on the top of a hill, in a rural district of Tasmania, there
stands a quaint little cottage. Down the slopes around, and away along
the distant valleys, are great belts of virgin bush. But here on the
hill is our quaint little cottage, and in or about the cottage you will
find a quaint little couple. They may not be able to discuss the
latest aspects of the Balkan question, or the Irish crisis, or the
Mexican embroglio; but they can discuss questions that are very much
older and that are likely to last very much longer. For they can
discuss fowls and sheep and pigs; and, depend upon it, fowls and sheep
and pigs were discussed long before the Balkan question was dreamed of,
and fowls and sheep and pigs will be discussed long after the Balkan
question is forgotten. And so the old couple make you feel ashamed of
your simpering superficiality; you are amazed that you can have grown
so excited about the things of a moment; and you blush for your own
ignorance of the things that were and are and shall be. Yes, John and
Mary can discuss fowls, for they have a dozen of them, and they call
each bird by name. Whilst poor Mary's back was turned for a moment the
rooster flew on to the table.

'Really, Tom, you naughty boy!' she cried, on discovering the outrage.
'I am ashamed of you!' And to impress the whole feathered community
with the enormity of the offence, she proceeded to drive them all out
of the kitchen.

'Go on, Lucie,' she cried, a note of sadness betraying itself in her
voice in spite of her assumed severity. 'Go on, Lucie,' and she
flapped her apron to show that she meant it, much as an advancing army
might defiantly flutter its flag. 'Go on; and you too, Minnie; and
Nellie, and Kate, and Nancie; you must all go! It was a dreadful thing
to do; I don't know what you were thinking of, Tom!' I said that John
and Mary could discuss sheep; but their flock was a very limited one,
for it consisted entirely of Birdie, the pet lamb. I cannot
tell--probably through some defect in my imagination--why they called
him 'Birdie,' nor, for the matter of that, why they called him a lamb.
I can imagine that he may have been a lamb once; but of feathe